The Sad-but-True Story of Cawood Rose and Schultz Robinson

As 1939 was coming to an end and 1940 was on the horizon, Cawood Rose’s future looked bright. He was married to a sweet, beautiful woman, Sally Payne, and had two children he adored, Betsy, age five, and David, two. Cawood was partners in a successful business with his brother-in-law, Clarence Payne, and was building his reputation as an up-and-coming young citizen of Tazewell, Tennessee.

By two weeks into the new year, however, Cawood was sitting in the Claiborne County Jail waiting to be arraigned for the murder of Schultz Robinson.

The official line of my family, the Paynes, was always that Cawood shot Shultz in self defense. That is what Cawood told my Aunt Sally, that is what Aunt Sally told the press, and that is what my father, Roger, always told me any time I asked him about it. “Cawood would have been acquitted at trial,” he always said with confidence. Unfortunately, Cawood never had his day in court, because three weeks later, he was gunned down in cold blood in the middle of the afternoon on Main Street in Tazewell by Shultz’s older brother, Benjamin Henry “Hadad” Robinson.

The Robinson family had their own version of the story, of course. According to them Hadad had understandably avenged the death of his brother, Schultz. Whatever the case, the shooting left Cawood without the chance to clear his name.

The story has always fascinated me, so later in life when my interest in genealogy and history armed me with the necessary research skills and tools, I set out to learn as much as I could about Cawood and Schultz and the terrible events that ended both of their lives, widowed two young wives, and left three innocent children fatherless.

1908-1932

Schultz

Shultz Robinson was born in 1908, the youngest son of Sterling Robinson and Lizzie Schultz. Lizzie was a descendant of a very prominent Claiborne County judge, and Sterling was from the well-respected Robinson family. Sterling had served in the Spanish-American war in Cuba. Several months after having been declared dead in newspapers all across East Tennessee, he made his surprising return to Tazewell. Soon thereafter, he married the beautiful, petite Lizzie Schultz.

Other than his marriage, there is nothing in the record about Schultz until he was nineteen.

In March of 1927, Shultz was with two of Lucy’s first cousins, Carson and Johnny Rose, at a roadside restaurant in Union County, when a customer at another table, Lacy Blackard from Knoxville, complained about a sandwich he was served. Schultz, perhaps because he was from a family of restauranteurs, took umbrage at Blackard, and as Blackard rose to confront him, Schultz shot him, and then fled. Blackard died at a Knoxville hospital within hours.

This account from the March 28, 1927 Bristol Herald-Courier gives eye-witness accounts:

On January 5, 1928, while Schultz was awaiting his March trial, his daughter Bettie Robinson was born. Exactly two weeks after becoming a father, Schultz walked into a Tazewell restaurant where Albert Overton was eating a meal with a glass of milk on the table before him. Schultz took a drink from Overton’s glass.

Overton was not pleased.

There is no evidence that Shultz’s “milk stabbing” factored into his “sandwich murder” two months later, but it is clear that Schultz had trouble minding his own business in restaurants.

At the March trial in Knoxville, the defense countered the prosecution with the claim that as Blackard was rising and moving toward Schultz, that he was reaching for his gun. The only evidence for this was that there was a bullet hole in Blackard’s vest, but not his jacket; thus, insinuating that Blackard was pulling his jacket back to reach for his pistol at the time of the fatal shot.

The jury found Schultz not guilty. I have to wonder if his youth and his new little baby at home were factors in his favor.

I have not been able to discover the disposition of Schultz’s “milk case,” but I did learn that he did not even show up for his preliminary hearing in the milk case in January 1929. Whoever posted Shultz’s $3000 bond for that charge, lost their money.

It may be that Shultz had left Tazewell by then. It may even be that his parents left Tazewell to get him out of trouble. Whatever the case, in 1929 Sterling, Lizzie, and Schultz Robinson were all living in Hamilton, Ohio, where Sterling, was working as a telegraph operator. A traffic violation in Schultz’s name in Hamilton in May of 1929 proves that Schultz was with his parents in Ohio at the time his trial would have taken place back in Tazewell.

At census-taking time in April of 1930, though, Schultz was back in New Tazewell with Lucy and little Bettie. They were living next door to his older brother, Bob. Bob was running the family restaurant in Tazewell and Schultz was working there. If it appears that, for a brief time, Schultz was staying out of trouble, think again. Four months later, Lucy was granted a divorce on the evidence that Schultz treated her inhumanely, had become an habitual drinker, and did not provide support to her and their child.

I must stop to give Schultz some credit. He had to have been a charming man. Despite being an habitual drinker who inhumanely treated a wife and child he did not support, Lucy either never finalized the divorce, or she got the divorce and then married Schultz again.

In 1931, now at the ripe older age of twenty-three, Schultz took a new job that seems rather unlikely for a problem drinker with violent tendencies: He became a deputy-sheriff for Claiborne County under Sheriff Frank Riley.

As I consider Schultz, an attractive and capable, yet, obviously, troubled young man, I keep thinking of the old adage, It’s not what you do, but who you know. I also wonder if the main lesson Schultz had learned by this point in his life is that he could get away with most anything.

Cawood

Cawood’s early life was much different from that of Schultz. Like Schultz, he was descended from a grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Rose, who was a very prominent Claiborne County citizen. The prosperous Rose farm was on Bear Creek in Lone Mountain. But unlike Schultz’s father, Sterling, who provided a stable and secure homelife for his children, Cawood’s father, Andy Rose, was more of a free spirit. Andy, quite literally, enjoyed “the spirits, ” and Prohibition did not slow him down much.

Andy was the eldest of Ben Rose and Eva Lane’s eleven children. One of his much younger sisters was Lucy Mariah Rose, who later married the youngest of the Robinson brothers, Schultz..

Andy Rose married Nannie Saunders in 1908. She had also grown up in Claiborne County. Andy and Nannie had four children: Ben Lawrence, Cawood, Andy, Jr., and June. Andy, Jr., however, did not live to see his second birthday.

When Cawood was ten, Nannie took the family to live with her brother in Neosho, Missouri. That is where she and the children were living in April of 1923 when she filed for divorce from Andy on the grounds of “general indignities.” She also asked for full custody of the children. Her petition was granted in June and published in the local paper:

Between the filing for the divorce and its becoming final, Nannie’s father died. Soon after, she and the children moved back to Corryton to live with her widowed mother, Catherine Saunders. In 1925 when Cawood was fourteen, there was another move – his grandmother Saunders bought a house on 106 Fairmont in Knoxville, and they all moved in together – Cawood, his brother and sister and his mother. Nannie was working as a practical nurse. When Mrs. Saunders, died at the end of that year. Nannie remained the house.

Evidently, Nannie kept the Fairmont house when she and the children went to live in faculty and staff housing at LMU where she began a job as Matron of the Dining Hall at L.M.U. This enabled the children to get free or reduced tuition at L.M.U. Academy, an excellent private high school associated with L.M.U. It seems that Andy Rose’s lackadaisical approach to fatherhood, was more than made up for by Nannie’s hard work and dedication to her children.

Cawood graduated from LMU Academy, in 1930:

In 1931, Cawood, June, and Nannie moved back to the Fairmont Blvd. house in Knoxville, and Cawood got a job as a lineman for Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph. Cawood’s brother Lawrence had married and was living in Harrogate. June was still in school.

Back in Tazewell that same year, a young man named Edward Eppes was home from his junior year at the University of Tennessee. He was killed in a freak accident while playing a game of baseball, leaving a devastated family and a heartbroken fiance, Sally Payne.

Cawood probably knew Edward, and I am sure he, along with every other young man in Tazewell, had noticed the lovely Sally Payne from Lone Mountain. As either chance or design would have it, Cawood received an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party thrown by her cousin, Owen Payne.

Sally was there.

1933

Connections

1933 was a year of connections and coming of age. Schultz was twenty-five and Cawood was twenty-one.

Schultz’s parents, Sterling and Lizzie Robinson remained in Hamilton, Ohio, but interestingly, Shultz and his oldest brother Hadad had switched places. Schultz was now running the family restaurant in Tazewell, and Hadad was living with his parents in Ohio. This seems rather odd, as only three years earlier, Hadad had been a practicing pharmacist in Middlesboro and was living on his own there with his wife and newborn son.

Schultz was in Tazewell to stay. His other brother, Bob, had served as a deputy sheriff under both Frank Riley and Della Riley since 1926, and most likely helped get Schultz the job as a deputy sheriff, which would have been an extra job for Schultz, rather than his primary source of income.

Cawood began courting Sally soon after that New Years’ Eve party at Lone Mountain. In March they attended a musical at the Tennessee Theater in Knoxville, and in June they spent a day on Lea Lakes in Grainger County with their good friends, Margaret Lane and Jimmy Greever. The same two couples, along with Owen Payne, went up to the Chicago World’s Fair in late August. Love was definitely in the air for Sally and Cawood.

Schultz, of course, was already connected to the Rose family through his wife, Lucy, who was Cawood’s aunt. In July, Schultz gained another connection to the Paynes when his first cousin, Pauline Robinson, married Sally Payne’s older brother, Tip.

These connections between the Robinsons and Roses and Paynes only grew due to their associations within the Tazewell community, almost all of them were good, and many exist until this very day. During this period of time in 1933 it seemed that Schultz had overcome his troubled youth to become a contributing member of society. He became involved in Claiborne County’s District #1 Democrat Party along with Tip and Clarence Payne, Frank and Della Riley, and his own wife, Lucy.

Cawood would also get involved with the District 1 Democrats in 1935, but in 1933, he was busy. He had left his job with Southern Bell in Knoxville, and gone into business for himself as owner and manager of the Tazewell Dry Cleaning Company. No doubt, it was his interest in Sally that brought Cawood back from Knoxville to Claiborne County, and in September of 1933, they were married.

1934-1938

In March of 1934, it was reported that, as Schultz was leaning over the engine of a car, the engine burst into flames and Schultz’s eyes were damaged. His mother, Lizzie Robinson, came down from Ohio to help with his convalescence. Schultz was totally blind at first, and doctors feared he would never regain his sight. Fortunately, he did. Once recovered, he continued working at the family restaurant along with his duties as a deputy sheriff for Frank Riley.

Shultz’s brother, Bob, after serving for six years as a Claiborne County deputy sheriff, became a member of the Tennessee State Highway Patrol, stationed in nearby Harriman. Bob often worked on big cases in the area, sometimes alongside Schultz as in a stolen car episode connected to the Clarence Bunch gang. (Clarence Bunch was a notorious criminal from the Caney Valley near Lone Mountain.)

When John Greer was elected sheriff in 1936, Schultz continued working for him – once going up to Detroit to bring a newly purchased car back for Sheriff Greer.

It appeared that things were much better on the personal front for Schultz as well. He and Lucy made trips to the Chicago Word’s Fair in 1935 and to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1936. Their family was also mentioned in the social pages when they traveled with their daughter, Bettie, for weekend visits with both her Rose and her Robinson grandparents.

For Cawood, with Tazewell in the throes of the Great Depression, his dry cleaning business was struggling. The month before he and Sally expected their first child, Cawood took an exam for a government job, in hopes of getting a position working on the Norris Dam project for the TVA.

On September 14, 1934, Elizabeth Payne Rose was born. Shortly after his “Betsy” was born, Cawood had to leave Tazewell to live in – and maybe help build – the planned community of Norris, Tennessee. He visited Sally and Betsy in Lone Mountain often – it was only 35 miles away – but within months Cawood moved them to live with him in Andersonville, a tiny town adjacent to Norris.

When his TVA job ended, Cawood had to plan his next move. In 1936 he returned to Tazewell and partnered with his brother-in-law, Clarence Payne, in a new business:

After Norris Dam was finished and the lake filled, Cawood became an avid boater. At the beginning of 1937, there was a devastating flood in Louisville Kentucky that submerged 70% of the city and forced 175,000 to flee. Clarence and Cawood set out to help:

Every boat that was sent from New Tazewell was lost. Cawood spoke to a local reporter:

The following year, 1938, saw Cawood boating for pleasure rather than disaster relief.

Relations were friendly among the Robinsons, Paynes and Roses. Sally and Lucy Robinson shopped together in Middlesboro. Clarence’s daughters, Peggy and Ruth, were close in age to Schultz’s daughter, Bettie, and they attended each others’ birthday parties. Sally’s brother, Tip, was married to Schultz’s first cousin, Pauline. A. Payne’s niece, Lucile Payne, daughter of her best friend and sister-in-law, Mattie A. Payne, (Aunt Matt Fate) married Schultz’s first cousin Horton Robinson. Horton and Pauline Robinson, were brother and sister.

Schultz did a lot of business with Payne-Rose Garage. Still a deputy sheriff at that time, Schultz was called out to many car accidents. It seems he often, maybe always, called Cawood to tow undriveable cars to Payne-Rose. It would have been a profitable arrangement for both men. When a big birthday bash was thrown for Schultz in March 1937, both Clarence and Cawood were in attendance.

Things took a turn for Schultz by July 1937, however, when he was charged with simple battery. I have never been able to find any more details about that charge after it appeared in the Progress on the Court Docket, but, in light of what happened later, may have been a sign that things below the surface in Schultz’s life, were not as rosy as they may have seemed. Only a few months later, Schultz and a close friend, Albert Smith, set out to make some extra cash by bilking an auto insurance company: they tried to make Smith’s car look as if it had been stolen and then they set it on fire. Unfortunately for Schultz and Albert, the claim was made through the US Mail, making the scheme an interstate affair, and, thus, a federal crime.

Automobile insurance was not required in those days and most cars were not insured, but apparently the Tennessee Insurance Board suspected something hinky had been going on in Tazewell for some time, and they had an investigator snooping around. One could even wonder if the car fire three years earlier that had temporarily blinded Schultz could have, itself, been part of that investigation. It seems that the serial number on a part that had come from the more recently burned-out vehicle, was traced back to Payne-Rose Garage. If Cawood had been asked about it, he may have identified Schultz as the source of the part which Cawood refurbished and sold.

1939

By the late autumn of 1939, when Schultz was released from prison, Cawood and Sally had another child, a one-and-a-half year-old year-old son named David. Schultz had not been home long before he confronted Cawood in the barbershop situated directly between the Robinson restaurant and the Payne-Rose garage. Cawood was draped and reclining in the barber’s chair getting a shave when, according to a later account in The Progress, Schultz came into the shop and informed Cawood of a plan he intended to carry out. After Cawood advised against it, Schultz “flew into a rage and smacked Cawood.” The barber held Cawood down to prevent a fight.

Many years later my father told me about this barbershop encounter, but added an interesting detail. Apparently after Schultz left the barbershop, Cawood pulled up the drape to reveal to the barber that during the entire encounter he had his gun drawn in case he needed it.

In the following weeks, Schultz stayed angry, threatening Cawood and telling everyone in town that he would never pay a $35 garage bill he owed Payne-Rose. Cawood sued Schultz for the $35 and won.

Such was the climate between Cawood and Schultz over the Christmas holiday of 1939, and into the dawning of what everyone was hoping to be the bright new year of 1940.

1940

The Tazewells had a thriving tobacco market with a top-notch warehouse where farmers from the area brought their crop to be inspected and, hopefully, purchased by tobacco buyers from all over the country. One of these was a North Carolina man named Frank Wallace, who was in the area on the weekend of the 14th of January. Mr. Wallace accidentally drove his car into a ditch near Tazewell and went to find a phone. He called Payne-Rose and talked to Cawood who told Wallace he would take care of it. After closing for the day, Cawood pulled Mr. Wallace’s car out of the ditch and then, on the way home in his wrecker, he stopped at the Midway Tavern for a drink. Or two. Or four.

Upon seeing Cawood’s wrecker parked outside the tavern, Frank Wallace went inside to ask if Cawood if he had already pulled the car out of the ditch. Fortunately, he had. Unfortunately, Mr. Wallace decided to stay for a few drinks himself. As the evening wore on, Cawood had too much to drink and, according to the tavern owner, Clyde Greer, became boisterous and disruptive. Greer, unable to persuade Cawood to leave, called the Sheriff to come take Cawood out of the bar. He later said he did not mean for Cawood to be arrested, just taken home because he was causing a disturbance.

According to Deputy Sheriff Clarence Harmon, he took the call from Greer and started to the Midway Inn about a mile from Tazewell. On the way, he just happened to run into Schultz Robinson and asked him for a ride, an unusual request, since it is unlikely the deputy on charge would not have had a vehicle available to him. Since it was common knowledge in town that Schultz was making such vocal threats against Cawood, it also seems odd that Harmon would involve Schultz in the call at all. And Schultz did more than just provide a ride to Harmon – he followed Harmon inside the tavern.

Also curious is the fact that Harmon, immediately upon entering the tavern, directed the manager, Clyde Greer, to the back; thus, ensuring that no one could see what was about to transpire when Schultz came in behind the deputy. As Harmon began to question Greer they both heard words exchanged at the bar behind them, followed by a volley of about ten shots.

Clyde Greer later stated that the first thing he saw was Cawood fiddling with his gun, and Schultz on the floor, struggling to rise before slumping back to the floor dead. Greer removed the gun from Schultz’s hand and put it on a table. He then realized that Frank Wallace had also been hit. Cawood was uninjured, having taken cover behind a metal Coca Cola cooler.

Deputy Harmon immediately took Cawood into custody, but he was released the following Wednesday on a $20,000 bond. After a preliminary hearing, his bond was reduced to $10,000, and the case was remanded to circuit court where the charges were to be reviewed by a Grand Jury in April. (Tennessee requires any felony charge to be presented to a grand jury. After hearing evidence a grand jury could change charges or drop them altogether.)

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With a court date two months away, Cawood did the only thing he could – he went back to work, even though threats hung heavy in the air around Tazewell. With Cawood’s place of business almost next door to the Robinson restaurant, things must have been tense on Main Street. Fearing for their safety, he and Sally took Betsy and David and went to live with Byrd and A at Lone Mountain. It was supposed to be a temporary move, of course, but on February 17, everything would change. Late that afternoon, Cawood was leaning over the engine of a truck parked on the street outside Payne-Rose Garage, when Hadad Robinson, Shultz’s oldest brother, came out of the restaurant with a shotgun and fired three times into Cawood’s back. Cawood died on the way to Rhea Hospital in New Tazewell.

Happening on a city street in the late afternoon, during dinner hour at the restaurant, and with most businesses still open, there were many witnesses to the shooting. Observations were that Hadad went out of the restaurant with the shotgun, fired the three fatal shots, came back through the restaurant, and fled in the car of Lucy Rose, Schultz’s widow. Local Newspapers were filled with accounts of the shooting.

Law enforcement looked for Hadad for two days until his brother, Bob Robinson, then an officer in the Tennessee Highway Patrol, found Hadad in Middlesboro with his wife and young son at the home of his father-in-law. Bob accompanied Hadad back to Tazewell where he surrendered to authorities.

Bob Robinson, who had spent his entire life in local and state law enforcement, resigned from the Tennessee Highway Patrol to serve as an advisor and spokesman for his brother throughout the entire, very public, ordeal of his trial. Bob claimed Hadad shot Cawood in self-defense, but Sheriff John Greer testified that the evidence did not support that claim.

With Lone Mountain now their home, Sally and the children grieved for their husband and father. Everyone in the large extended Payne, Jennings and Rose families rallied around them as they began to move forward with their lives. Every week the Claiborne Progress was delivered to the house, often with news of Hadad Robinson’s upcoming trial.

Hearing, delay. Hearing, delay. The months went by.

Everyone was focused on that trial until Sunday, September 1. Anne, Maury, and Roger, who was living with them in Chattanooga while attending college, were visiting Lone Mountain. After enjoying Sunday dinner together, Byrd went into the front room, strummed a few tunes on his guitar, leaned it against the wall, and then lay down to take his Sunday afternoon nap. There on that sofa, Byrd suffered a massive, fatal heart attack. The family, once again, was laid low by grief.

The Trial

Almost four months after Byrd’s death, Hadad’s trial finally took place. It was pretty much as expected. Hadad claimed self-defense, the evidence refuted his claim. There was one piece of new, and surprising, information that came out during the trial, however. A Knoxville physician testified that during the year leading up to the murder, Hadad Robinson had spent several months at the Eastern State Hospital, an asylum for the insane; thus, adding another sad layer to the tragic story for all involved.

The jury deliberated for five minutes before convicting Hadad Robinson of the murder of Cawood Rose.

With Hadad’s request for a new trial denied, and his appeal unsuccessful, he was sent to prison in 1941; thus, ending the saga of Schultz Robinson and Cawood Rose.

The tragic series of events that traced back to a barbershop argument between two former friends, left two families totally torn apart, two lives lost and another ruined, two widows and three fatherless children, not to mention another wife and son living with the burden of an imprisoned husband and absent father.

Sad. Unspeakably sad. But true.

Epilogue

Later in 1941

1948

In March of 1948, after serving less than seven years of a twenty-one year prison sentence, Hadad Robinson was paroled by the Governor of Tennessee with the stipulation that he never again live in Claiborne County. He got a job as a pharmacist in Louisville, Kentucky, where his wife and son joined him. In October of that same year, Hadad died of a heart attack.

1948-49

Lucy Rose Robinson, widow of Schultz Robinson married Claude Overton, eight years her junior, and the younger brother of Albert Overton. Albert was the young man whom Schultz had knifed in the ice cream shop after the “milk” incident. This coincidence means that Lucy had been married to the man who both killed her nephew (Cawood) and knifed her brother-in-law (Albert.)

Cawood

Even though my father, Roger, always assured me that Cawood would have been acquitted at trial, I always expected that the truth was not that simple. I also expected to find that both Cawood and Schultz were rather wild young men and hard drinkers. It crossed my mind that if I ever uncovered the truth, I might not be able to write it for fear of hurting people I loved. Surprisingly that has not been the case.

I approached my research with an open mind, and have left no stone unturned. Other than Cawood having too much to drink at a bar one night, a common scenario among many of Claiborne County’s finest in those days, I found Cawood to be an engaging, hard-working, decent young man who grew up with a fine mother, married a fine girl, and set out to build a life and raise a family.

I hope this story has, in some small way, finally given Cawood the day in court that he deserved so many years ago. I believe he was an innocent man who killed in self-defense and was then murdered in cold blood. He did not deserve any cloud that may have hung over his name these past eighty years.

Cawood and Sally, now resting together in our Payne family cemetery at Lone Mountain, left a rich family legacy – two children, five grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren, and seven great-great grandchildren.

And counting…